I used to wear thongs all the time but I misplaced one of the pair and just got around barefoot for ages. Then the missing thong turned up and I was like, awesome I can wear my thongs again, let’s go to the beach.
“Have you ever been to Christmas beach?”
“No, sounds awesome lets go, I can wear my thongs” I replied.
After a long drive through the swampy lands of lower Ocean Shores we arrived in the carpark.
“Shall we just go see what it’s like then come back and get our stuff?”
“Sounds like a plan to me”.
So we set off through the bush track and down the stairs where bestowed upon us was the most beautiful river outlet beach I’ve ever been to, there were even bush turkeys roaming around. I kicked my thongs off just near the track and proceed to the river to check the location.
“This is awesome, I’m going back to get our gear” I said.
I turned around to put my thongs back on and they had disappeared. Those people who had just left couldn’t found them and thought they were abandoned could they? I walked around the bush adjacent to the stairs and looked under the trees for a bit and concluded that they must’ve stolen my thongs! I ran after the innocent beach-goers but upon awkwardly approaching them on the track back to the carpark I realised that they hadn’t taken my thongs.
How could they disappear within 30 seconds of me kicking them off in the bush? Bush Turkeys! That’s it, that smart-arse teenage-looking bush turkey I had seen when we arrived had stolen my thongs. My thongs and I were reunited for the short period of 22hrs. Christmas beach is amazing, the sand is soft and water is lush but beware of the Thong Thief lurking in the bushes.
This is a painting I made recently of the bush turkey that stole my thongs that day that is showing at the Byron Bay Classic.
IG: @jeremyaustin
Exhibition open: Thurs 24 March –Weds 30 March 10am-4pm
Gala Awards Night: Wednesday 23 March 6pm til late
“THONGS THIEF”
Charcoal, spray paint, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas
91 x 91 cm – 2016
Jeremy Austin is an Australian artist based in The Northern Rivers of NSW who works in a variety of mediums out of studio in Lismore. Growing up in his fathers art store in Lismore, surrounded by art materials his entire life he found himself becoming a keen mark maker, a young Jeremy was busy soaking up the art of comic books, graphical science fiction books and Letraset lettering catalogues.
Never straying far from the tactile world he graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts with a focus on light projection sculpture and animation with his work being featured in the International Animation Festivals both in Australia and London.
Now a keen painter, illustrator, street-artist and a self taught screen-printer, Jeremy prints his artworks onto T-shirts under the label TANGLEHEAD and continues the exploration in mark-making by creating new works in a variety of mediums in and out of his studio in Lismore.
Reoccurring characters act as a vehicle for the continued exploration into catatonic automatic drawing as well as muscle-memory schemata drawing with the aim of bringing the immediacy and honesty of the compressed line work of my sketchbook sessions to canvas and walls.
